Wednesday, October 29, 2008

I am sitting here trying to review Woman's Will's great Macbeth. I'm in Orange County, California, Newport Beach. The only cafe around here is Peet's Coffe & Tea.

I try to get onto the Womanswill.org to get some skinny, and it turns out, Peet's filter thinks it's porn. Woman's Will is a theater troupe that does Shakespearean productions with an all-woman cast. Although that might seem pornographic to some imbeciles, it is definitely not.

When my laptop told me that Woman's Will was pronography, I actually said out loud "you gotta be fucking kidding me!" I started laughing, but now I'm a little angry. I hate internet filters. I hate anything that tells me what is taboo and what isn't. To build a fence around an acting group that does community outreach and education is reprehensible, more reprehensible than anything I can find online. There is a lot of nasty shit online, and this is worse, Peet's Coffee & Tea, this is worse.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

I saw Beowulf a while back and loved it. I went with a friend of mine who happens to be a very beautiful woman and writer from Washington or some other state that borders Canada. She's always late, so I thought we weren't going to actually make it in on time. But she got there at the last possible second, and we even got good seats. The show was extended and sold out, this being the last weekend, so I lucked out that she didn't flake. I would have had to sit by myself.

The show is amazing. I loved it.

Afterward, we were walking to a bar, and she got a call from one of her "girlfriends" who was hving some kind of breakdown because of a break-up. She ended up talking with her "girlfriend" for most of our walk. After hanging up, we talked about the "Sex in the City" movie. Do you ever get the feeling that all the posturing and exclaiming women do about how "super important" their "girlfriends" are is all just for show, that it's all a sham? When women tell me that their little circle of friends are so much like a fictional TV show, I can't help but think that they have been duped by a fantasy. I also find "girls night out" or "boys night out" kind of offensive. I have friends that include men and women, and I don't think there is a division on gender lines. Sometimes those gender lines become uncrossable borders by the double standards of the women I know, but never by me or my male friends. The very idea that my male friends would want to have a special night on which we don't invite any women out with us is ludicrous, and I don't think we would do anything differently if we did.

We got to the bar and she told me a familiar story about how some guy who wanted to take her to an exotic location. I've heard this story a million times, and I'm always surprised that men actually invite women they hardly know to exotic locations. It must work sometimes. But my friend said, "I'm not a whore, you can't just get this for free.""Well," I said, "I think he was trying to buy it with that trip.""Well, I'm not that cheap either.""You just called yourself a whore."

Anyway, Beowulf was crazy good and hilarious. You should see it if you live in New York. Banana Bag and Bodice company will be putting on the show in April at Harry de Jur Playhouse.